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All Is But Fantasy by Whitney White (The Other Place, RSC, Stratford-Upon-Avon) - 8★ REVIEW
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- [00:00]
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- [00:33]
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- [01:17]
Micky Jo (Theatre Critic and YouTuber)
The first thing you need to know about this play is that it's actually two plays, both alike in dignity, each of which in their two acts explores and deconstructs a different Shakespearean character. 4 In Lady Macbeth, Amelia from Othello, Juliet, you know which place she's from, and Richard iii. It's a little reductive to say so, but this is basically woke Shakespeare and it features a lot of the conversation about his work that I've been eager to hear for a really long time. The first play left me mesmerized, the second took something of an unexpected turn. Plenty for us to say, let's talk about All Is But Fantasy at the Royal Shakespeare Company. But first, a quick introduction from me. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Micky Jo and I am obsessed with all things the I am a professional theatre critic here on social media and last week I spent the entire day at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon to see All Is But Fantasy at the Other Place, which is one of their venues. The piece is centrally performed as well as written, directed, composed by Whitney White, who is a multi hyphenate American theatre maker whose work up to this point I had only experienced. As director. She had directed one extraordinary play that I had loved on Broadway as well as one disappointing musical revival. The less said about which the better. But in this piece, in which she is joined on stage by a small British supporting cast as well as a band, I felt as though I had the opportunity to be far better acquainted with who she is as a performer, a creative and a human being, because it's a very personal work, a very raw and exposing one, as she explores and interrogates these various different Shakespearean characters, specifically Shakespeare's women, specifically women whose deaths are depicted in Shakespearean plays. Female characters who die with her ultimate thesis through the thing being what it costs for women to play these roles, which were never actually written, to be portrayed by women. And not just that, but also the broader impact of telling these stories again and again and again on society. What do we learn from staging Othello repeatedly? What does that tell us? And what belief does that begin to foster within society? When Whitney White first emerges on stage, she does so singing what's the difference between what you're told and what you know? An idea which recurs throughout the following four acts. But just as Whitney has created this work exploring Shakespeare, I am very excited to explore her work today and tell you all about it. If you have had the chance to see this already or an earlier iteration of the same work, let me know what you thought of it in the comments section down below. And of course, if you would like to hear more of my reviews, make sure you're subscribed here on YouTube or following me on podcast platforms. But in the meantime, let's talk about all is but Fantasy at the rsc. Now, the way that this actually works logistically is it is a two part play. But unlike others that you may have seen or been aware of in the past, like the Inheritance or Angels in America, they are not specifically labeled Part one and Part two, though perhaps they ought to be. There's something of a disjointed feeling between the two at the moment. And I left between the two plays thinking that this was extraordinary, being so ready to call this a revelation and a triumph. And the second play never really managed to capture the same excitement. Excitement in me. If I've ended up giving this a star rating, which I probably will, then it's probably going to be an 8. But it's not a 4 and a 4. If anything, it's a 5 star and a 3. And yes, I have chosen to give this two part play a star rating out of 10. I know, reductive but also fun. Now let's talk a little about how this work has actually arrived on the stage of the rsc. The first act of the first play is centered around Lady Macbeth. It begins with a whole heaped tablespoon of context as Whitney arrives on stage, introduces herself to the audience and explains the thesis behind this theatrical work that she has this Tremendous enduring love of Shakespeare. And is searching for a way to see herself and find herself in these roles which he has written. And trying to rationalize the women depicted in Shakespeare's plays with her own lived experience as a black woman. And the conceit is that over the four acts, Whitney is going to try and portray each of these four characters partially in original Shakespearean verse, with multip scene partners predominantly Daniel Crickler, who is playing each of the various men who she must play opposite, but also incorporating her contemporary musings and explorations. And music as well. Music, which doesn't propel the narrative forward in the same way that it would in a musical. It feels a little more like play with music. It's almost gig theater or even like incredibly high art cabaret, with the music, by and large, offering these moments of emotional flourish or the opportunity to. To dwell in a particular instant or relationship, or these injections and lacerations via which the bottled tension of the whole thing can kind of spill out and be released. There's also a little more to it as well, because music is one of the tools via which Whitney finds these characters and relates to these characters and inhabits them. We can see pretty quickly as she begins to portray Lady Macbeth, backed by a trio of witch backing singers. Cast sensationally, by the way, with Renee Lamb, Georgin Honora and Tamika Ramsey. Stellar casting that she is playing Lady Macbeth, but she is also playing Lady Macbeth as if she were Tina Turner. And drawing some kind of parallel between these two very empowered, wronged women. And the whole thing, over the course of the two plays, sinks deliberately deeper into its own theatricality and moves steadily further away from that initial framing device and the reassuring familiarity of it. Like a boat being pushed out into a deceptively treacherous lake. And the sort of formulaic structure of whole piece, I think, is one of its strengths. We begin by exploring the role, and really exploring it of Lady Macbeth and asking provocative questions, ones which deliberately disrupt the flow of the performance within the performance. As Whitney questions aloud why this woman, who up to this point in the play has been so strong and so steadfast, would suddenly turn mad. And why she, in this dual narrative, isn't worthy even of an on stage death. Lady Macbeth is the perfect choice for an initial stepping stone on this path. Not just we know to such an extent who she is and what to expect from her story, but also because the first question that is being asked here is how women can find power and agency. And this sense of a desire for power and empowerment is found Specifically and clearly in the story of Lady Macbeth, each act is its own sort of experiment. And this one in a male dominated story, and they all are, is an opportunity to try and inhabit a woman in the totality of her own identity, defined not by her role as a wife, defined not by her husband, which ultimately, within the constraints of Shakespeare's quill, isn't possible. She searches with such determination for meaning and impetus in the disjointed, fractured and implausible arc of Lady Macbeth. One of the most interesting things here, and I love the interrogation of any piece of theatrical writing, is the study of the arcs of Shakespeare's female characters in isolation. When you simply look at their scenes, when you simply look at the words that they speak from one moment to the next, and the opportunities that they actually have to speak, what we end up seeing is quite evidently unfulfilling and inherently incomplete. So, dissatisfied with Lady Macbeth, Whitney gives us her best outdamned spot and has done with it. Moving on to one of my favorite Shakespearean characters, Amelia in Othello. Not only are we now talking about race in a play which famously does, but we have another player arriving on stage. If Whitney is to portray Amelia, she's going to need a Desdemona portrayed by Juliet Crosby, with Desdemona being not just a white woman, but the quintessential white woman giving way to a conversation about whether her and Amelia, who exists within the play to serve her and to help facilitate the vengeful misdeeds of her husband, can, in the face of all of that, genuinely be friends. And it's at this point that we arrive at some of my favorite moments in this entire work. Let me tell you a little bit more.
- [09:31]
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- [10:04]
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- [10:05]
Micky Jo (Theatre Critic and YouTuber)
Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go?
- [10:15]
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- [10:38]
Micky Jo (Theatre Critic and YouTuber)
About them. So it's as Amelia that Whitney is able to have some of the most fascinating conversations of the piece. Talking about so many different ideas, talking about race and relationships with such nuance, asking, asking difficult questions about why women stay in abusive situations, why brilliant, intelligent women choose men such as those depicted in Othello, not just the obviously treacherous Iago, but also Othello himself, so effortlessly deceived into this extraordinary act of murderous violence against his wife. I recently saw a major West End revival of the play Othello, and you might recall from that review that I was hugely dissatisfied with the way in which this act of violence was foreshadowed and ultimately portrayed. If you're going to produce Othello, you owe it to the audience to have some kind of a meaningful conversation about domestic violence, as well as everything else that the player is exploring. So I had been waiting eagerly, desperately for a conversation just like this, and they talk about in all is But Fantasy, the idea of even reviving Othello so frequently with handsome, charismatic actors as Othello and Iago, and the perpetual intrigue about who is going to play Iago, that being sort of the central and greatest role in the play, and how, even in a powerful and aware and meaningful production, this excitement about Nago and the casting of a charismatic and handsome Iago is its own sort of detrimental statement when he even considers whether the trope of the eloquent, surprisingly articulate black person comes from this very play, and whether this microaggression is perpetuated by this play being so often produced. Ultimately, there is a shocking conclusion to this act, which gives way to a sorrowful rhapsodizing on violence against women and violence born of ignorance and bigotry. And this, I think, is the concept of the play at its very best, this extrapolation of the Shakespeare to talk about the world in which we are living now and the issues that we are facing. There's so much that Shakespeare can say, and did say inherently on the page, but there's even more that we can say if we hit pause and talk about what it is that just happened, which is what this piece does incredibly well. And the finale of Amelia is without question the strongest moment across both of the plays. It seems simultaneously impossible to come back from and continue from, and also thrillingly exciting. And in the hours that pass between these two plays, I'm thinking What questions, what conversations are going to arise when she next plays Juliet? But also beyond that, how in the hell do we get to Richard iii? And why is that the finale to the entire thing? And as it turns out, the gap between these two plays is not just the passage of a couple of hours. It is also this fair, seismic tonal shift and this sort of movement of focus. Because when we come back to Romeo and Juliet, ready to really interrogate the thing, we meet abstract versions of these characters who are all younger. The whole thing feels deliberately nostalgic and perhaps divorced from the mission statement of the first play. But it's fine. We think we're going to get there in the final part. And there is value in exploring the youthful perspective on a juvenile character, on adolescent characters such as Romeo and Juliet, a young version of Whitney White, who even then understands that Juliet is not necessarily at her fingertips. She says, when she is implored to play this role, I don't give good Juliet, which would be fine if we were building towards this satisfying culmination with Richard iii, but it feels as though we sort of remain in a pseudo abstract realm without the contextualizing that we had enjoyed in the first part. I can't fathom, by the way, the notion of anyone seeing this the other way around, at least one day in the run where Romeo and Juliet and then Richard III are the matinee and Lady Macbeth and Amelia follows that in the evening. I can only assume that's for people who perhaps can only see a matinee but want to see the second part, and that that isn't actually intended for anyone to see both in that order on that day, because that seems baffling to me. And Richard iii, though off piste, is also interesting because Whitney, as a character within this narrative, playing a version of herself, feels at this point, by the experience and by these first three experiments, that she now arrives vengeful. And it is she who will play the role of Richard iii, rather than Dan Crickler, who has been playing all of the male roles up to this point. And there's something of a confrontation between the two of them about this and the notion that he will have to play the female roles alongside her, Richard. She tackles the question of Richard's disability head on, saying, I do not know what it's like to be in a body that doesn't move in the way that you want it to, but I do know what it's like to in a body that makes people turn away. Finding some really unexpected kinship with this character and there's the sensation that she has been so wounded by the time she has spent playing these characters. Lady Macbeth, who inexplicably goes mad. Amelia, who is casually murdered after being puppeteered by her husband. Juliet, who kills herself in her youth on behalf of Romeo. And this love that when she arrives as Richard iii, she does so with a vengeance and a sorrow and a grief that separates her from her original focus. And there's something very emotionally powerful in that, but also inherently dissatisfying, in part because I think the original context of her thesis is so intriguing that we want to circle back to that I say with a little more frequency. But really just ever in the second act, it feels as though this second play is a completely different way of exploring these characters and these ideas than she was doing in the first. And like any fantastic piece of theatre, I've scarcely been able to stop thinking about this and considering it in the days which have followed. And so many questions arise about how this work could be developed and what it was that I was yearning for this to continue being. When I came back to watch the second of the two plays, was there something in its conclusion that ought to have brought us back more meaningfully to the realm in which we began? Would the entire thing be more cohesive, more theatrically satisfying if presented as a single piece of four acts may be slightly reduced in each instance. Are the songs valuable at every point when they are performed? Is there a quality of their lyrics that sometimes doesn't adequately resemble the Shakespeare which they are performed alongside? The very idea of this play is to my mind, so brilliant and so exciting. And, you know, people who like football like going to see Dear England, the play about football. People who like politics like seeing theatre about politics. It stands to reason and is almost a cliche that I really love pieces of theatre that are unashamedly about theater. And I don't think it's navel gazing because there's so much conversation in there about the wider community, about women, about black women, about society in general, about violence, about what we interpret from these stories that continue to be told about the value and the impact of that. A conversation which I think is too often trivialized. What I think I so appreciated about the first play, though, was its unavoidable reality and truth. And we lost too much of. Of a sense.
- [18:06]
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- [18:31]
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- [19:25]
Micky Jo (Theatre Critic and YouTuber)
So Whitney White is playing the role of woman. Daniel Crickler is playing the role of man. They each introduce themselves to the audience using their real names. There is more of this later on in the play, but it's also a sort of a false biography because they allude to a historic relationship between the two of them, which I don't believe is actually the case in each of the four plays. The dynamic that they have is pursuant to the one that they are depicting. So when they are about to portray Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, there is this inherent sort of knowing tension between the two of them. They have some kind of a past, some kind of a history. By the time they are playing Emilia and Iago, they have grown closer in romantic proximity, but there is also a palpable tension and a danger to their relationship. They both regress to play Romeo and Juliet and there is a flirtatious quality. And then finally with Richard iii, when everything is inverted and turned on its head and Whitley plays Richard and Daniel Crickler plays Mol, multiple female roles, there's this extraordinary tension and a standoff between the two of them as she demands this of him and he almost refuses. And like Richard, she has to convince him, coerce him into doing this thing that he is initially completely opposed to. And he gives very good bravado and masculinity that is toxic and then boyish. Throughout the first three acts of this work, he does wonderful recitation of Shakespearean dialogue. He transforms into each of the characters that he needs to, but it's his work in Richard III that I found to be the most captivating because his character struggles aloud with the idea of feeling a sense of intimidation. He says that she can't intimidate him so the scene can't work in the way that it needs to. And in utter commitment to the Shakespeare and trying to get this right, he borrows a corset, literally this instrument of medieval subjugation and straps himself into it in order to restrain this part of himself equipping a historic female garment, not to make himself look more feminine, but in order to feel the pressure and intensity of being bound in that way. I thought that was a fascinating choice. And it's a great opportunity for us to talk about the costume design by Sutra Gilmour, who in usual fashion is also the set designer, which I just love. The whole thing looks like a kind of a Manhattan loft or rehearsal studio, perhaps. But the costumes. I was already in love with the first act costumes. And the hair choices. Extraordinary hair, fantastic hair that is the work of Sandra Smith and Violet Barry. But the evolution of Sutra's costumes, going from kind of black leather clad rock and roll roots to, oh, these gorgeous 70s outfits for Othello. And then like Y2K 90s, early 2000s nostalgia for Romeo and Jul. And then finally this almost futuristic, still Shakespearean, but just black intensity for Richard iii. Everything about all of these costumes, I could have just listened to nothing they were saying and just stared at the detail. I thought they were absolutely gorgeous. And the three witches looked like Destiny's Child at their most stylish. I said before astonishingly well cast these performers. I mean, to have any of the above. Renee Lamb, Georgina Honora, Tamika, Ran Ramsay in your show is already a privilege. To have the three of them together, singing, harmonizing, playing the three witches of Macbeth, who then linger throughout the following acts of Shakespeare. Playing different roles among them, but also kind of echoing the intrusive thoughts of Whitney's own mind was staggering. They each had individual moments to really shine within the piece. Renee Lamb had some really great material towards the end and probably had the most impactful role among the three of them. But what an absolute treat to have that dynamite trio of actresses. Some other creative thoughts that I had. The music sounded fantastic. There was a quality in Tony Gale's sound design. I just wanted a little more clarity. I wanted as much clarity in the sung lyrics as in the spoken, which is a very difficult thing to bring about, especially in, like, black box studio space that has been configured as a long thrust stage. But it's one of those pieces in which every word seems to carry weight and importance and meaning. And I wanted to be able to follow them all crisply. I did love everything that was happening visually. I was so intrigued by the evolution of the staging from one scene to the next. The whole thing becomes increasingly more contrived, which I thought was just great. And I very much enjoyed the notion of distilling each of these plays, down to their one major set piece, the one that we had during Macbeth was the rolling out of this red carpet beneath a lowered chandelier. In Othello, a bed is brought on stage. Fatefully, in Romeo and Juliet, it's a sort of a playground structure that also acts as a balcony, obviously the iconic balcony from Romeo and Juliet. And then finally for Richard iii, plastic seats on either side of a coffin across which a very reluctant woman is to be wooed. And even though the script is unpacking these plays and these characters at every turn, the direction overall gave this sense of delving deep, deeper and deeper into it in a way that was harder to claw your way out of. Juliet Crosby arrives as Desdemona, later joins the band and portrays a character referred to as Shadow Juliet. I thought that she was Stella in each role. The song during the Othello sequence, why'd you fall in love? I think it was called Slapped. Absolutely. But it's Whitney White's indelible performance that's going to stay with me. I've spoken about her work as a director and as a writer of this piece, but as an actress, as its central performer, she was just extraordina. The humanity of the entire thing, the exposed vulnerability of it all. When she bleeds on stage, it's only a theatrical effect, but metaphorically, it's as though she's exposing her entire soul. So those have been some of my thoughts about the fascinating, challenging, complex, nuanced, layered piece of theatre that is the two parts play. All is but fantasy from Whitney White. I am extraordinarily intrigued to hear what other people thought of this. The reviews have been an entire spectrum and there's perhaps a dissatisfaction from me about how the entire thing concluded, because that first play is perhaps the best piece of theatre, the most exciting that I've seen so far this year. The scrutiny that it was bringing to Shakespeare, the dialogue that it was instigating, the relationship that it was finding between these characters and the musical identities with which they could be understood. Everything about what this was doing in its earliest scenes, its earliest acts, I thought, was just extraordinary. If that energy and that focus can be sustained in what I assume will be an inevitable, ongoing development of this piece, this could be remarkably special. As it stands, I still think it must be seen at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon if you have the chance over the next couple of weeks. It's only playing a very limited run, but do go and check it out for yourselves. And once you have come back here and let me know what you think thought. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to my review. I hope that you've enjoyed if you did, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube or follow me on podcast platforms for more reviews coming very soon. And as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
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